


I Understand Your Tears Are Silent

by othersunsets



Series: The Attack on Titan Oneshots [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Childhood Trauma, College Student Eren Yeager, Eren deserves so much better, Eren deserves the world, F/M, Falling In Love, Five Times, Fluff and Angst, Gender-neutral Reader, I cried while writing this, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, So much angst, This Story Has A Happy Ending I Promise, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Trauma, True Love, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:41:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28143273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/othersunsets/pseuds/othersunsets
Summary: You didn’t know how you were supposed to stop yourself from falling in love. You didn’t have a chance.Or: five times Eren doesn't tell you he loves you, and one time he does.
Relationships: Eren Yeager & Reader, Eren Yeager/Reader
Series: The Attack on Titan Oneshots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2058165
Comments: 13
Kudos: 120





	I Understand Your Tears Are Silent

i

“This is such a goddamn motherfucking shitty class,” you say, almost under your breath. 

You hear a sound coming from your immediate left, in the seat next to you in the lecture hall. 

The person lets out a huff of air, an almost-but-not-quite-a-laugh at your comment before lowering their head, suddenly very concentrated with their notebook. 

You take them in all at once: 

Soft brown hair gathered into a low bun, silky strands snaking out from the hair tie. A baggy brown sweater and baggy light wash jeans. Slender fingers adorned with copper rings grasping a blue felt pen, hovering over a black notebook. Chipped black nail polish. Dark circles, formed from a mixture of fatigue and eyeliner, surrounding bright, piercing, intense eyes. There’s so much sadness hidden behind those eyes. An emptiness, masquerading as pure rage.

And it’s the smile. Well-it’s the ghost of a smile, a hint of what could be. Lips pressed into a thin line, the side of them tilting up just so, but wavering, as if they’ve forgotten how to smile, or never knew how to in the first place. 

You didn’t know how you were supposed to stop yourself from falling in love. You didn’t have a chance. 

“What’s your name?” you ask them. You wonder if they can hear your voice wavering. 

There is a moment of silence. A decision is made. And then they respond, and your life is changed forever. 

“Eren,” they say softly. “He/him.” 

“(f/n). (pronouns). What’s your major?” 

“Sociology.” 

“That’s really cool.” 

“...”

“...”

“...What’s yours?” he asks. 

“Huh?”

“Your major.”

“Oh. (your major).” 

“...That’s cool.” 

At the end of class, when he isn’t looking, you write your number on the corner of a page in his notebook before racing out of the lecture hall and walking home. 

‘ you’re right, by the way. it IS a goddamn motherfucking shitty class,’ he texts back an hour later. 

ii

You can’t do the normal things with him. You can’t pretend you don’t want to text him. You can’t pretend that your heart doesn’t skip a beat every time his name flashes across the screen. You can’t wait more than thirty seconds before texting him back, and he texts you back in half the time because he doesn’t play games. He doesn’t pretend.

He walks you to your apartment every day after class, because it’s a late class and he wants you to be okay, and you feel bad because he lives on the other side of campus, but he insists. 

Eren disappears sometimes, but he tells you. He tells you ‘im going through something right now’ and he doesn’t show up to class for several days but he tells you, he prepares you. And even though he does, you still feel a tightening in your chest when you see his empty seat.

One day, you ask him why he tells you he’s going before actually disappearing, because you’re used to people disappearing from your life without warning, and he tells you ‘because you’re the only person who cares’ before kissing you.

Your teeth clang together, and he holds his hand at the back of your neck to guide you, and he presses his body against yours, and it’s almost too much, because he’s giving you everything, and you feel so much intensity behind his kiss, but you still want more, you want so much more. 

iii

Eren is embarrassing. Eren is so embarrassing. Eren yells at someone for five minutes after they bump into you so hard that you fell to the ground, and they don’t say sorry. You don’t intervene, and you don’t pretend you can change him, because you can’t change him, and so you pretend to look at something on your phone and wait for him to cool down. But you don’t walk away. You promised you would never walk away from each other. 

You realize quickly that the anger isn’t directed at you, it’s directed at the general cruelty that is the world. He never yells at you. He treats you like you’re made of glass. 

He looks at you like he’s scrutinizing you sometimes. His eyebrows furrow and he looks like he’s mad but you know that’s not it, so you wait for him to tell you how he feels. 

And Eren says that that day in the lecture hall was the closest he’s come to smiling in ten years. 

You make love a few nights later, and Eren tastes like sweat and salt and maple. 

iv

Eren gets straight to the point. Eren treats you like he can’t live without you. 

One night, as the two of you are making your way through a handle of tequila, Eren tells you that he lost his parents ten years ago. Eren is a mix of vulnerability and invulnerability. Tears stream from his eyes, and he flinches as you try to wipe them away. You stop. He tells you to keep going. You kiss his face and you lick the tears away, and Eren whimpers, and he collapses against you. His fingers curl into your shirt, and he pulls so hard that the neck of it stretches beyond repair. 

You confide in him. You tell him more than you’ve ever told anyone. Eren tells you that he wishes he could hurt the people who hurt you. 

Eren has nightmares almost every night. Eren clings to you, and he burrows his head into your neck, and he smells like maple, and his tears stain your t-shirt, and you sing to him softly and run your hands through his hair until he falls asleep. 

You want to turn back time. You want to hurt the people who hurt him. But you can’t. 

You know you can’t heal him with a kiss, but you certainly try. 

v

On the good days, Eren tickles you, and you pretend to crawl away, but he pulls you to him and peppers kisses all across your body, because he can’t say the things he wants to say out loud sometimes, and so he shows you. 

On the good days, Eren stays at your place for hours, and he doesn’t disappear, and you give him a key, and he says ‘Maybe I should just stay here with you from now on.’ 

On the good days, Eren takes his medication, and he swears that he’s starting to grow a beard, but you tell him that you can’t see anything, that his face is still smooth and clear. He pouts, but he doesn’t mean it. 

On the good days, Eren writes your name over and over in his notebook until he runs out of pages.

vi

Eren tells you he loves you underneath a maple tree on a warm summer day.

When you say you love him back, the sun surrounds him like a halo, and he closes his eyes, and his hair gets swept up by the wind. 

And he smiles for the first time in ten years.

**Author's Note:**

> i was trying to encompass my love for eren so i hope this did him justice as a character. he deserves so much better. he deserves the world T_T


End file.
